Green Thumb

Written on August 7th, 2010

A wonderful part of being a Peace Corps Volunteer, other than getting to live in a foreign country and helping people, is having lots of free time to do things you've always wanted to do but never had time for. You can read all these books you've always meant to read but never had the time to, try new hobbies, practice drawing, write poetry etc.
One such activity for me is gardening. Despite my last name I've never really has a very green thumb. I love being outside and observing nature but I've never really been one for growing things. I'm the girl who couldn't grow a potted flower in a Ben & Jerry's pint container that you just had to water and I'm pretty sure my senior year at Beloit I killed a cactus. Also, gardening has always kind of intimidated me.
Here in the Gambia however its the rainy season. This means most members of my village are spending a considerable amount of time in their fields and when they're not in the fields they're resting/exhausted from all that manual labor. Needless to say they have neither the time or energy for health talks or demonstrations or project planning meetings. Also, school is out so I don't have peer health or health lessons to fill my days. This drastic slow down in my work, along with the arrival of seeds from Courtney in a package made me think I should get off my butt, face my fears, and start gardening.
I decided to set up the Lindsey Green Inaugural garden beds at the skills center because of the good fence and hand pump but realized after I committed that I had picked an extremely public space, meaning my successes or failures will all be out there for the village to admire or criticize. But as they say "What better place than here, what better time than now."
So this week my army of small boys and I tackled the skills center project under the watchful, and sometimes overly critical, eye of my counterpart, the chain smoking attaya drinking skills center manager.
We cleared a patch of land and made three raised beds. Today I planted my first crop with seeds from Grandpa Bill, carrot, beets, squash and beans. I'm cautiously optimistic that it will work but also prepared for absolutely nothing to grow.
My gardening exploits have obviously got me thinking about how much of my Peace Corps service is a game of trial and error. Everything is a risk and I feel like most activities have a fifty-fifty chance of success or failure. Though this is sometimes incredibly frustrating and discouraging I also think, when else in my life will I be able to so freely just try things for the hell of it and see how it goes-whether that's gardening, a shorter haircut or a community development project.
Though I've signed up to spend two years of my life helping the development of the Gambia, I also have been given the chance to try whatever I want, within reason, for the next two years. This freedom gives me the opportunity to try to make innovative change in KJJ but also to expand myself. If I want to try vegetable gardening why the hell not? If I want to try poetry I can grab a pen and write, if I want to have short hair I can do just that. When I get frustrated I feel its important to remind myself of this and to not let fear or self-doubt discourage me either. I might dry out/drown/kill all of my plants but whats the hurt in trying??